By Kenny Curtis, Jillian Hughes
The Greek myths told at full podcast speed by a wisecracking narrator called the Oracle of Wi-Fi — Medusa, Hercules, and the whole Trojan War with the jokes left in.
This is the book version of the National Geographic Kids podcast, and it sounds exactly like it. A chatty, joke-cracking narrator who calls himself the Oracle of Wi-Fi runs your child through the greatest Greek myths at a gallop: Pandora and her box, Medusa and her snakes, Perseus, Hercules working through his twelve labors, and the whole tangled soap opera of the Trojan War. These are the real stories, with actual history and facts folded in, but the Oracle tells them the way a funny older cousin would — dropping asides, teasing the gods, and racing you to the good part.
The comedy is the whole engine here. Plenty of myth collections read like homework, and the jokes are what keep this one from feeling that way — your child is laughing at the gods instead of memorizing them. The chapters are short and stand on their own, so a reader can finish one and stop rather than facing down a fat reference book. And because it started as a podcast, a child who falls for the Oracle's voice can go listen to it, which helps a lot if reading stamina is still a work in progress. Along the way it hands over the source stories that Percy Jackson and the meatier collections just assume you already know.